The First and Last Hint of Spring
by arliddian
Summary: It is fitting somehow that the last person he seeks out and sees with these eyes is the first person he saw when he was reborn with them. Ten/Rose oneshot set during the goodbye scene in End of Time.


**The First and Last Hint of Spring**

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**Summary: **It is fitting somehow that the last person he seeks out and sees with these eyes is the first person he saw when he was reborn with them. Ten/Rose oneshot set during the goodbye scene in End of Time.  
**Author's Note:** Written for Challenge 96 (_'springtime'_) for the Then There's Us LJ community.  
**Disclaimer:** Don't own it; don't sue me.

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It's the middle of winter. The snow this time is real, and normally he would love it, but tonight it feels blank and so _cold_, and he is dying. Everything he is, everything he has been in this body, with this personality, is ending - here and now, he has reached the final season of this life.

He hadn't set the coordinates meaning to talk to her. All he really wants is a glimpse, because it is fitting somehow that the last person he seeks out and sees with these eyes is the first person he saw when he was reborn with them.

And then she appears, a flower of pink and yellow and purple blooming through the snow, like the first hint of spring. His last spring. He doesn't mean to talk to her, really he doesn't, but when he shifts, a jolt of pain shoots through his broken body and she hears his groan.

"You all right, mate?" she asks, and because she's Rose and he's the Doctor, he has to suppress the urge to close the distance between them, to take up her hand and run with her one last time.

"Yeah," he says instead, staying in the shadows, where he belongs. He has had his time with her, and it is not yet. Not now.

"Too much to drink?" she asks with a knowing, cheeky smile, and he is struck one more time by how trusting she has always been, how comfortably she talks to complete strangers. Here he is, for all intents and purposes a strange, creepy bloke lurking in an alley, and she asks if he's okay. It's just so _her_.

"Something like that," he says, and now that he actually _is _speaking to her, he wants this conversation to never end. He wishes there was some way he could halt the process that he feels approaching like a blizzard, but then she says "Maybe it's time you went home," and he agrees because he knows she's right. This is the last stop on his farewell tour. There's nowhere to run after this.

"Anyway," she continues, and her smile is like a burst of sunlight breaking through a frozen winter sky. "Happy New Year."

"And you."

He watches her walk away, and he can't help himself from asking one more question to keep her talking, even just for a little while longer, even though he already knows the answer. This is his first and last hint of spring, and what poor winter-beaten soul wouldn't want to hold on to that for as long as possible?

"What year is this?"

Her answering chuckle of disbelief is the loveliest sound he's heard in a long, long time. "Blimey, how much have you had?"

He answers her with a non-committal "_Well,_" and just watches her, waiting for her answer, etching and re-etching her figure on his memory as if it hasn't already been imprinted there for all eternity.

"2005, January the first," she tells him, speaking slowly and clearly so as to make everything perfectly clear for the poor drunken (dying) fool standing in the alley.

"2005," he repeats. She nods, rubbing her arms, but he doesn't even notice the cold any more, not now that his cells are dying one by one, and he is standing here with Rose Tyler at the end and the beginning of everything.

She is so young and fresh and new. _This _Rose knows nothing of the history of their relationship, the monsters they have faced, the worlds they have crossed again and again to find each other. For him, everything is ending, but for her, everything is about to begin. This year her world will expand beyond the Powell Estate to encompass all of time and space. This year she will take his hand and together they will run across the stars. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS.

"Tell you what," he says, and his voice sounds strangled, straining through so much emotion he is not allowed to express. "I bet you're going to have a really great year."

"Yeah?" she asks softly, smiling like this shadowy stranger really can tell what's ahead for her, like his opinion matters somehow, and as he nods, he wonders if they had always been inexorably drawn to each other, even now.

There are tears in his eyes, and they make her shine all the brighter. The pain is getting worse and he can't hold on much longer, but while she's looking at him like that, it doesn't matter. Winter is closing on his bones now, and as he watches her turn aside, he knows that his season is over.

But then she turns back and beams at him, one last dazzling smile that he knows he will carry somewhere in his heart forever, no matter whose face is on the outside.

Her smile is like springtime, and here at the end of his life, for them, everything is beginning again.

_Fin_


End file.
